Commission WIP: Constantine (Pt. 2 + final)

Check out Part 1 here!

We left off right when I was about to start the lineart, so here are the initial lines and flats!

I say "initial" because I recently discovered some new brushes I wanted to experiment with. As some of you know, I'm fascinated with the idea of making my digital art look traditional. I miss creating traditional art, but I like that digital requires less materials to purchase and carry around, and also allows you to experiment and Ctrl+Z frequently.

I've been trying to play around with textures for several illustrations now, but I'd just discovered a lineart brush that looks like a colored pencil. You can see the difference below!

It really looks like I've drawn this with colored pencil + Copic markers, which is really cool. It's the first time I feel like the traditional illusion is coming across.

To me the two give different vibes - my usual brush (left) feels more "strong" and graphic and the new brush (right) is softer and might work better for more femme illustrations, like magical girls, lolita, or Sugarplum Cafe. I'd like to cater more to that audience, so that works out! I'm still looking for The One Brush - I'd prefer a lineart brush that looks more like a watercolor brush than a colored pencil - but this will do for now.

So here's how the commission looks with the new brush + flats (I did start some shading in this screencap):

And here's the final image! Since it is technically a ref sheet, I removed the textures from the palette so you can easily swatch the colors.

I feel like these commissions always end up becoming a place for me to experiment with art, and I'm super grateful to my clients for letting me do that.

I'm really excited to start offering this new "paper doll" style of commission, but I'd also like to develop a smaller scale commission type that I can churn out quickly. These full-fledged illustrations do end up taking lots of time away from gamedev, sadly, so I'd love to find something smaller like portraits that people would still be interested in!